Under the Stars and Smaller than Man
by zosimos
Summary: Mashup: Pre-season 5. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Roy/Ed.


When summer hits they head north but the heat chases them, through wide open landscapes and past the mountains. They don't look for anything big, just local haunts and various creepy crawlies they stumble across in their own particular brand of luck. No demons, odd enough to mention but Ed's had enough of demons to last a lifetime.

No angels, either.

Days roll past like the landscape, meaningless tide of time. They run into Winry in a small Colorado town, miles from the interstate. She didn't seem too surprised to see them walk through the doors of the bar; Al looking haggard and tired and a thousand years old, and Ed cold eyed and quiet. She sat down with them but the conversation barely skimmed the surface, and eventually she got up and left. Al hardly noticed.

Every day Ed felt more and more the burden of being his brother's keeper. Al was exhausted easy and Ed knew that, Ed put him to bed and watched over him, he ordered Al food while Al stared blankly at the menu in front of him and occasionally Ed would keep up a stream of mindless chatter just to fill the silent void.

The only time Al seemed to come alive recently was when they were on the trail of something, and that worried Ed in so many more ways than everything else combined.

After Al was safely abed (he slept so much now) Ed got up and wandered to the seedy trucker bar that was attached to the motel. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, a fight, a quick fuck, anything that would make him feel like himself again. Instead, he found himself nursing whiskey at the end of the bar, hunched over it and realizing coldly, in his gut, that things were _good_, right now.

The world wasn't ending, at least not yet. He had Al. He was alive.

He didn't even sense Winry sitting down next to him until she put a hand on his arm and he jerked in surprise. Her look was inquisitive and he was somewhere past drunk and entirely too honest. She listened and offered words where appropriate, her advice was cold and practical and exactly what he would have expected of her.

Ed didn't know when he started kissing her but suddenly she was on his lap and his tongue was in her mouth and his hands up the back of her shirt. It felt right but then the bartender started yelling and the spell was broken, she slid off his lap and Ed dropped cash on the bar and fled out the door into the humid summer night.

Winry followed him into the parking lot, gravel crunching loudly beneath her practical boots. Ed didn't know what to tell her, but then she pulled him down into another kiss, and Ed was left feeling confused and forlorn as she strode purposefully back toward the bar. He knew he was meant to call her back. He didn't.

They left early the next morning, packed up before dawn, Ed having spent a sleepless night sprawled in an uncomfortable motel chair and finishing off the six-pack of beer. He was still somewhere around being buzzed but that wore off around mid-morning and skidded directly into hangover territory, the sun glaring off the other cars on the highway and the heat going straight into his face.

The car didn't have air conditioning, they rode with the windows down. It made what little attempts at conversation Ed had tried impossible, and so they rode the entire nine hours down through New Mexico in silence.

They stopped off at a small little border town for the night, middle of nowhere as usual and while Ed was waiting on some takeout something on the local news about a sickness claiming the lives of members of a certain parish. There didn't seem to be much else in common but it was a small town, and Ed asked a few questions of the cashier as he paid.

Ed told Al about the deaths over dinner, watched the prospect of a hunt revitalize his brother in ways that nothing else had, recently. Suddenly Al was communicative, they were talking over theories and potential causes. Over the next few days they chased down leads and possibilities, eliminating them one by one until Al ran across some local Spanish lore about the _civatateo_. Vampire-like creatures, they sucked the life-force out of people and their victims died quickly of what looked like natural causes.

Between them, they were able to find the culprit - the parish's secretary, a fair young woman with pale features and hair so finely blonde it almost looked white. The death's head mark that was found on _civatateo_ was located between her shoulder blades and a single silver stake took her down. Al delivered the killing blow and looked up at Ed wildly and Ed was terrified at what he saw there, what Al was turning into, but then Al blinked and it was just Al again.

They celebrated their victory at a bar a hundred miles away from the hunt and for the first time in a long while, Al was himself. Ed made a passing comment about a redhead at the bar and Al took him up on it. It filled Ed with relief to see Al chatting her up and then they were walking out of the bar, Al's arm around the girl's waist to steady her, leaving Ed alone in the rapidly-emptying tavern.

Ed drowned his sorrows quickly in his beer, finishing it off. It was a gorgeous night out and he would waste it by cleaning his weapons and buffing the new scratches out of his car. He put the bottle on the table gently and was surprised as someone put another bottle down before him.

"You looked lonely," Roy Mustang said as he slid into Al's unoccupied seat.

Ed didn't ask how Roy had found him, or what he was doing a thousand miles from home. Roy answered the questions unbidden, he had been following a _mishipizhiw_ across several southern states before losing it somewhere on the far west side of Texas. A little bird had told him that the Elrics were heading down I-25 and a touch of hunter's luck had put him in town yesterday.

Couldn't mistake Ed's car, no matter what plates he had on her. Ed smiled at that, a tired smile but an honest one. They drank another few beers and shot the shit, Ed rifted good-naturedly on Roy's newest set of war wounds delivered by a regular lynx because Roy apparently failed at cryptozoology, and Roy in return questioned Ed's history in bed. There was a pause in conversation there and then wallets were fished out and money slapped down on the table before they quickly fled the bar.

They didn't make it to the room. It was the middle of the night and Ed dragged Roy to the Impala and they had sex in the back seat, one of the doors slightly open and the windows still down. It was uncomfortable and cramped and Ed hit his head on the roof and Roy twisted against the seat, cool metal seat belts pressed into skin but it was hot and heavy and Ed needed it so much it hurt.

After, Roy showed him a clear, clean stretch of river and they both stripped to nothing and swam out, the half moon laying fat and low in the sky. Down wind they could hear teenagers hooting and splashing but no one disturbed them in their small patch of the river. Ed got out of the river first, spreading his clothes out on the grass and stretching out on them. Roy joined him after a while and they just lay together under the dark expanse of night sky.


End file.
